With two of its starters fighting injuries, the Hoya baseball team needed a strong start from freshman pitcher Darren Sizemore to get through its Wednesday game against UMBC.

Sizemore came through in a big way, striking out eight in 8.1 innings to hold off the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and give Georgetown a close 2-1 victory at home.

“If he had a short outing, we were in trouble really,” Georgetown Head Coach Pete Wilk said. “The win was huge, but the fact that he went and saved our bullpen was just as big.”

The win is Sizemore’s fourth of his rookie year.

“I was very impressed with their freshman pitcher,” UMBC Head Coach John Jancuska said. “He did an outstanding job throwing strikes and changing speed.”

For the Hoyas (13-17, 1-5 Big East), every mid-week, non-conference game is important to win to build momentum into the weekend Big East series, especially with all of the injuries that the team has suffered recently.

Junior infielder Joe Graziano, who had played in 11 of 30 games, will be out for the rest of the season after getting hit in the jaw during batting practice two weekends ago. Sophomore pitcher Michael Gaggioli should be coming back soon but is not yet 100 percent, according to Wilk, but senior pitcher Stephen Burns is still out.

A few other position players are hurting, but all three – junior catcher Brandon Davis, senior center fielder Timmy Jones and senior shortstop Matthew Johnson – started on Wednesday.

Like the Hoyas, the Retrievers (10-14, 0-1 America East) were dealing with some injuries on their pitching staff, too. In anticipation of a four-game series this weekend, the Retrivers tried to conserve their arms, but they used a different strategy, keeping their pitchers on strict counts.

Sophomore left-handed starter Tom Schlein tossed three decent innings before junior righty Matt Buchholz came in relief. Buchholz, who stayed in until the end of six, took the loss for giving up the winning run.

Georgetown first got on the board in the second inning, as senior third baseman Drew Dargen scored on a Davis single.

Dargen, who went 3-for-4 on the day, plated both runs for the Hoyas, as he scored again on senior first baseman Ryan Craft’s double.

The Retrievers were aggressive on the basepaths, with three batters stealing a base each. But Davis caught sophomore center fielder Brian Moran trying to steal second base in the third inning. Considering that UMBC followed that play with two singles, including a run, Moran could have been the tying run.

“We’ve been struggling a little bit swinging the bat, so we’ve been trying to get men in scoring position more,” Moran said. “It was a little gamble.”

Davis then picked sophomore left fielder Joe Fowler off first base to end the inning.

UMBC actually outhit Georgetown by one, 8-to-7, but as Jancuska said, “They got one more key hit than we did.”

Next up for Georgetown is a three-game series with Louisville (12-17, 4-2 Big East). The first game starts today at 3 p.m. at Shirley Povich Field in Bethesda, Md.